Hocus (33 page)

Gus said nothing, looking down between his feet again.

“Yes,” Bea said, “that’s all it is. Nathan?”

Cookie said, “Of course. I’m sorry, Gus. I guess my nerves are on edge, too.” He sat down.

Cassidy glanced at me, then moved to sit in a chair near Cecilia, across from Gus and Cookie.

“Gus,” he said quietly, “I don’t blame you. We’ve avoided the topic that’s been on everybody’s mind all evening. You’ve always been close to Frank, right?”

He nodded.

“And you know who has him?”

“Those boys,” he said to the floor.

Cassidy glanced at me again, leaned back.

“Do you remember that day?” I asked Gus.

“You mean when the boys were found?” he said, looking up at me now.

“Yes.”

“Sure. Never forget it. I got there last. Cookie and Bear were there. Not Brian, though.”

“Brian had gone fishing that day,” Cecilia said. “He was off that weekend.”

“That’s right!” Bea said. “I had forgotten. That’s why he got back so late. He used to go fishing with some friends of ours in Bodfish.”

“Bodfish?” Cassidy asked. “I never heard of a fish called a bodfish.”

“It isn’t named after a fish, it’s named after a person,” she said. “His name was George Homer Bodfish.”

“I guess he didn’t want to have to live alone with it,” Cassidy said.

“Brian was in Bodfish that weekend?” Cookie asked.

“Just Saturday,” Cecilia answered. “He was back here by Sunday night.”

“How do you know?” Pete asked, coming in from the kitchen.

“It was the first time I’d been to a Father’s Day dinner. The Harrimans invited me. When Frank got the call that day, Brian hadn’t come back from fishing. Our plans got changed a little.”

I gave Pete a look that said “Lay off.” I guess he got the message, because he took a seat and didn’t say anything more. Rachel came in and sat next to him.

“I’m sure anyone who was a friend of the family would remember that Father’s Day,” I said. “All three of you went to the scene?”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “I don’t think anybody who was there could forget those two kids. Or Frank, the way he was that day. Oh, man. I felt so bad for him, you know, because he caught that call.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“I was working…. I had just come on for my shift, soit must have been… let’s see… around six-thirty. That’s right — I was on days for those last few years before I retired. Brian had also been on days, but he had been on them for a long time.” He glanced at Bea and then up at the photos on the mantel. He shook his head sadly.

“Six-thirty?” I said. “You must have been there pretty early on, then.”

“Naw, the call had been in for at least half an hour. I didn’t hear about it until I reported for work. We had started working tens then — ten-hour shifts. Seven
A.M
. to four
P.M
., five
P.M
. to two
A.M
., eleven
P.M
. to eight
A.M
. You’d come in about thirty minutes before and stay about thirty minutes later for the shift changes, but those were the shifts. Frank and Cookie worked graveyard shift. What’d you have then, Bear?”

Bear was frowning. “I must have been mixed up about something yesterday….”

“When I met you, I think you were working afternoon shift,” I said. “Bars would be closed, we’d go to one of the all-night coffee shops — you and Frank and I. We’d talk until everyone wound down, until about four in the morning.”

“That’s right,” he said, but he still looked puzzled.

“Afternoons… I must have been on afternoons.”

“Frank switched to graveyards after you left, Irene,” Bea said. “Cecilia worked days. He’d sleep while she worked, and they’d go out in the evenings.”

Cecilia seemed uneasy with this talk. “It cut every evening short,” she said quickly.

“Well, Frank was lucky to have y’all there for him,” Cassidy said, pulling the conversation back to that day. “I understand he took it pretty hard.”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “Those kids — they just wouldn’t let go of him. Even after their mothers got there. We wanted to talk to Frank, but any man came near ’em, they freaked out.”

“Now I know!” Bear said. “The scanner!”

The rest of us looked puzzled, but Gus started laughing. “Oh, goddamn — excuse me, Bea. Oh, oh — I’d forgotten about that, you were such a—!” He looked at Bea again, couldn’t seem to come up with a clean word, and contented himself with laughing.

Bear was turning red. “Gus, it’s not
that
funny!”

“Cassidy,” Gus said, “you have never met anybody whose blood is so blue. Blue, blue, blue. The guy works ten-hour shifts, spends all his time off with other cops, and when they can’t stand him anymore and send him home, what does he do? Listens to his scanner. Remember how much sh — uh, what a hard time we used to give him about that, Cookie?”

Cookie, who had been silent for some time, merely said, “I remember.”

“You were there that day, too?” I asked him.

“Yes. I was there. As Gus said, I worked nights. But I wasn’t working that Sunday, the one when Frank found the boys. I had come in on Friday night, and worked until eight on Saturday morning. I was off on Saturday night and Sunday morning.”

“How did you find out about it, then?”

“Bea called me, said Brian was out of town, asked if I could go over to the warehouse.”

It seemed a little odd to me that Bea, who must have heard about the incident from Bear or Gus, would call in additional reinforcements. But this may have been the way their “extended family” operated — all for one, one for all.

“So you were there fairly soon?” I asked Bear.

“Yes. I tried to go down to the basement, to talk to Frank, but by the time I arrived the crime lab was there and not letting anyone near him. Once they came up out of that basement — as Gus said, the boys became very upset around any other man. I thought it was just me, at first. But they reacted that way to any other male.”

“Do you have any idea where they’re holding Frank?” Gus asked.

“Not at present, no,” Cassidy said. “But we believe it’s somewhere in Las Piernas. Folks down there are working hard to locate him.”

“What are you doing out here, then, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Ryan and Neukirk — the boys — contact us here. They tell us they have some task for us to complete before they’ll release Frank. Something to do with the murder of their fathers, I’m sure. Any of you have any idea what it could be? If you did, it could sure help us — help Frank most of all.”

No arms crossed, no nervousness, no eyes averted. Yes — Cassidy was a cool liar.

“Something to do with the old case?” Gus was asking. He grew thoughtful. All three men were silent, seemed to be considering the question.

“I don’t know what it could be,” Bear said. “The boys know the killer is dead, right?”

“Yes,” Cassidy said.

“Cecilia,” Cookie said, “you discovered the body of the killer, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Were there any signs that he might have had a partner, an accomplice?”

“No,” she answered. “Not a thing. Of course, I didn’t get involved in the forensics — just made the call.”

“Wait,” Gus said. “Cookie — man, they never should have kept you out of detectives. You were born to be a suit, I tell you.”

Nathan Cook colored red from his neck to the top of his head. “Really, Gus—”

But Gus was continuing, in a tone that seemed — at least to me — to be slightly sarcastic. “You see how he is, Cassidy? He can think ahead like that—”

“Gus—” Cookie tried again.

“No, I mean it. We used to say it that way, ‘one smart Cookie.’ Remember, Bear?”

“Yeah, he’s right,” Bear said, looking nervously at Cookie. “But I don’t—”

“Gus, Bear. Please,” Cookie said.

“You’re brilliant,” Gus went on. “The rest of us always assumed it was just the one guy doing the killing down in that basement, but Cookie here thinks differently from the average cop. I mean, that’s a hell of a suggestion. Maybe there was more than one person involved—”

“Sorry, Gus,” Cassidy interrupted. “You’re right, ol’ Cookie here is smart. But I’ve read the reports from that case, including the labwork. Other than the victims, there was only one man in that basement. There were several indications that it was only one man, but one piece of evidence was almost undeniable proof.”

He turned to Cookie. “You see, there was quite a bit of blood on the floor, and anybody who went all the way down those stairs couldn’t miss stepping in it. Until Frank went out to his car to make the call, no one had walked in and out of that basement except the killer.”

“Hmm,” Cookie said. “I suppose that rules out an accomplice.”

“As I said,” Cassidy continued, “spatter patterns and other evidence back that up. Those boys were just damned lucky that someone called the department about the suspected robbery. If not, who knows how long they would have been down there?”

“Those boys,” Bear said. “I mean, it isn’t too hard to understand that you might not be quite right after something like that, is it? Sitting down there for hours and hours….”

“Let’s not get morbid,” Cookie said. “I’m sure Bea didn’t want us to come over here just to make her think about such gruesome things.”

“I’m all right, Cookie,” she said. “You know I’m tougher than that.”

“Yes, well, I’m not so tough myself,” Cookie said. “I’m older than the rest of you. If you’ll forgive me, I’ve got to be going.”

Everyone stood, and the good-nights began. Cecilia left right after Cookie. Gus and Bear had driven over together and left soon after her. We waved good-bye from the front porch.

Bea and Rachel and Pete went back into the house, leaving me on the porch with Cassidy.

“I guess we both know who it is, now,” I said.

C
ASSIDY RAISED A
brow. “Oh?”

“It’s Cookie, isn’t it?” I said.

“Now, what makes you think so?” he asked, although nothing in his voice indicated he disagreed.

“Bret Neukirk’s version of events that night may or may not be completely accurate, but there are certain parts of the story that he’s unlikely to have invented or misremembered.”

“Such as?”

“Such as what time of day they were traveling to Lake Isabella. He said they left the house at three in the morning and were pulled over by a patrol car. The Bakersfield department wasn’t so big or poorly managed that you could just drive a cruiser off the lot without anyone noticing. So they were probably pulled over by a car that was already in use.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that. We’ll assume it wasn’t a stolen cruiser.”

“Gus worked days,” I said. “He would have finished his shift by four in the afternoon. Bear would have been off by about two-thirty in the morning. Only Cookie would have been in a patrol car after three in the morning.”

“Yes, but if Bret had the time wrong by an hour or two, it could have been Bradshaw.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but he would have been pushing it — he would have been at the very end of the shift, planning to take two men hostage. But Nathan Cook had plenty of time.”

“Powell was there to help him — might not have figured on needing much time. It’s clear the boys were an unexpected complication,” Cassidy said. “I’m not arguing against your notion about Cook, though. He mentioned he had worked that shift.”

“Which is another thing that bothered me about him. This happened a dozen years ago. His memory is almost too good.”

“A dozen years ago for everybody,” Cassidy said.

“Sure. Every one of them seems to remember
something
about that day. There are reasons for them to remember it — Frank was important to them, for starters. Second, the Ryan-Neukirk case was so disturbing. And they have a memorable date to tie it to — because the bodies were discovered on a holiday. Boys and their fathers on Father’s Day.”

“Okay, so it made an impression that could last a dozen years.”

“Right. Gus can remember working that day,” I went on, “because like most people, he remembers where he was when he received shocking news. He first heard about the murders when he reported for work.”

“And Bradshaw?”

“Bear was a little less sure — when we first talked to him, he thought he was working, but that was because he remembered hearing Frank’s voice on the call. For him, the first memory of that day is an auditory one. It’s not surprising that he connected a call on a scanner with being at work. But even though he was mixed up about where he was, he clearly recalled the part of the memory that made the strongest impression.”

“But you think Cook ‘remembers’ too much?”

“Exactly. He said he was off that Saturday night and Sunday morning. He said he got a call from Bea on Sunday morning. Maybe, maybe not — we may never know. If he had stopped there, no red flags would have gone up. But then he tells us that he remembers coming into work on Friday night and working until about eight on Saturday. Why? Why should he remember that?”

“You think he was lying?”

“No, Mr. Neurolinguistics. I think he was telling the truth about working that graveyard shift. He worked it all those years ago, and remembered it. Do you remember which nights you worked and which ones you had off ten or twelve years ago? No. You remember the nights when something extraordinary happened. So does Cook. That was a night he probably won’t ever forget. He pulled Julian Neukirk’s car over, and set hell in motion. Yeah, I think it was a busy night for him — knocking people unconscious, taping up children’s hands, going treasure hunting. Saturday night was busy for him, too, since that’s probably when he gave Powell a shove.”

“I think he was doing his treasure hunting that night, too,” Cassidy said. “You said you thought that slope was visible from the campground during the day, right?”

“Yes. The campground is on the same side of the canyon, but upriver.”

“This was Father’s Day weekend,” he said. “Mid-June. By the time Cook ended his ten-hour graveyard shift, turned in a car, and drove up to the place where X marked the spot, it would have been midmorning.”